They walked inside to where Cyil had finally calmed down and was begrudgingly stewing some meat pieces over a roaring fire in the middle of the kitchen floor, completely disregarding the stove sitting in the corner, or the oven embedded into the wall.
Riselus just sighed and moved on. Axel stopped to smell the food - for all the fuss Cyil made over cooking, it was already smelling pretty good - before following Riselus to eat with the others.
Cyil served some odd-looking chunks of meat mixed haphazardly in with random plants he found (some of which weren't edible). Axel noticed that the other four kept shooting grumpy looks at Cyil. He took a bite of the meat and grimaced. Cyil had somehow made it both undercooked and overcooked at the same time, and had forgotten to drain the blood beforehand.
"What were you guys doing out there after we went inside?" Qassot asked through a distinctly dry mouthful of meat.
"The volcano erupted," Riselus said while picking out the plant leaves that hadn't mixed with meat.
"Cool!" Cyil said. "Let's go check that out after!"
"I don't want to hear your voice right now," Dracoa grumbled, chewing on a burnt piece of meat that was still bloody.
"It's not my fault I'm no good at cooking," Cyil grumbled.
"That doesn't mean you'll get out of doing your chores," Qassot retorted.
"You're pretty much doing this on purpose at this point," Dracoa said, spitting out a bone.
"Why would the volcano erupt?" Qassot asked, changing the subject.
"We were going to investigate after we ate," Axel said.
Aavern looked troubled through a soggy pile of leaves. "Isn't a volcano erupting not something you want to hold off investigating?"
"Why?" Cyil asked. "Isn't it just a mountain that spews fire everywhere?"
"Well, yeah, but it spews a lot of fire everywhere. I feel like that would be important."
"It's fine, we have gems now!" Cyil said cheerfully. "Qassot can put out the fire with all that water in the ocean!"
"That will mess with the land, though," Qassot said.
"Then don't mess with the land?"
Dracoa tried to whack Cyil with her tail. Cyil dodged and fled. Dracoa got up and chased after him.
"There they go again," Aavern mumbled around his food.
Axel finished eating and stood up. "Where's the bathroom?"
"The what?"
"I think there was a scroll about that somewhere," Qassot said. "It's a place where you wizards dump your waste, right?"
"Close enough," Axel sighed.
Aavern pointed at a potted bush in the corner of the room. Qassot pointed out the window at the cliffs dropping down to the ocean. Riselus pointed at a hole in the ground near the base of the castle.
Axel sighed and walked out of the castle.
By the time Axel came back, the other three were lounging around the room in a similar fashion to when Axel first arrived; a light blue-green dragon huddled up in the corner reading a scroll, a small winged golden fuzzy thing sitting at the table eating, and a large armored panther standing in the forcibly widened doorway.
There was a sudden crash as Cyil burst into the hallway Axel was standing in, followed closely by an angry black storm. Cyil crashed head first into Axel's chest, almost knocking him off his feet, before landing in a dazed heap on the floor. Dracoa caught up immediately and swept him up triumphantly in a whirlwind.
"Congratulations, Cyil," she said, "you're getting thrown off the cliff again."
"No!" Cyil said, squirming. "It takes so long to fly back up!"
"That's what you get for cooking bad stuff on purpose," Dracoa replied.
A rumble interrupted her.
"What was that?" she asked. Cyil took advantage of her lapse in concentration to squiggle out of the whirlwind and hide under Riselus.
"That's odd," Axel said. "That was much stronger than before."
The ground rumbled again. It was even stronger this time.
"Something's coming," Riselus said loudly, startling Qassot to her feet.
There was another rumble. Even stronger this time, shaking the hallway they were standing in. Qassot immediately leapt over Riselus and started running down the halls back towards the entrance to the castle. Dracoa and Axel followed close behind.
"I don't get it," Axel said while running. "That rumbling was much weaker before we started eating."
Another rumble almost knocked Axel off his feet. He stumbled, righted himself, and kept running.
They burst out of the entrance to the castle and emerged into the dimming afternoon sun. There was another rumble. The earth was shaking visibly now. Large chunks of rock were cascading down the mountains to the north of the fortress. Riselus, Cyil, and Aavern came out behind them.
"What is it?" Cyil asked. "I thought that was supposed to be the volcano erupting."
"I don't think this was a regular volcano eruption," Dracoa said.
"How would you know? Have you been in a volcano eruption before?"
This time, it was Aavern who smacked Cyil, giving him a look that told him to take it seriously.
"Sorry," Cyil mumbled.
The rumbling came again. The tops of the nearest mountain began to crumble, and the slopes close to the castle started heaving up and down.
"The mountains are collapsing," Aavern commented. He pointed a wing towards the close end of the mountain range, where the tallest, volcanic peak of the Raik Mountains had been toppled and shorn apart by some strange force that was now moving towards them, leaving behind slow-flowing glowing red streaks.
"What do you think caused that?" Dracoa asked Riselus.
Before Riselus could answer, a massive explosion of rock and dust drew their attention to the nearest mountain. A spray of glowing yellow and red droplets was thrown into the air. Axel braced himself and shut his eyes against the shockwave. A wall of dust and rubble came cascading down the mountainside, brutally crashing against him like a tidal wave.
For a moment, Axel's mind left his body. The constant lashing of dust at his entire body, the full force of nature colliding against him as he fought to keep standing - it felt familiar. His brain dimly heard splashes and shouting, and heat on his forehead, contrasted by a cold torrent against his body.
Cyil's shrill voice from somewhere near his feet snapped him back to reality.
"WHAT ON EARTH JUST HAPPENED?"
"JUST KEEP HANGING ON!" Aavern's voice sounded from near Axel's other foot. Axel tried opening his eyes against the dust. The blast had subsided significantly, now a gently blowing cloud that wrapped around his head and obscured his vision. He looked down. Cyil and Aavern had wrapped themselves around his legs. He shook them.
"Get off, it's over."
"That was weird," Aavern said, climbing down.
Axel looked over to his left. Riselus had made a small wall of rocks to shield himself. Next to him was some sort of dusty whirlwind surrounding something black and long (Dracoa, probably). To Axel's left, a shimmering sphere made of hundreds of silver swords unfolded like a blooming flower to reveal an unscathed Qassot.
"What was that about?" she asked calmly.
"Definitely not a volcano eruption," Dracoa commented as her protective whirlwind unraveled.
"Let's go check it out," Axel suggested.
Qassot stopped him.
"Let's not. I'm getting a bad feeling."
Axel looked at her.
"You can trust her," Aavern assured him from his feet. "She's got this supernatural sense that can detect magic."
Axel looked through the dust towards where the mountain should be. Near his feet, he could hear Cyil mutter a chain of words under his breath.
"Voice inside the volcano," he murmured. "Similar heat to the gem inside Ezarik's castle."
Axel looked at Cyil in confusion.
"Dracoa?" Cyil suddenly asked, snapping out of his trance.
"This better not be another sarcastic comment," Dracoa snapped.
Cyil ignored this statement. "So would there just so happen to be an Elder Dragon buried under the Raik Mountains?"
Dracoa paused. She took a sharp breath. The gem around her neck glowed. A sudden gust of wind blew the dust cloud away.
Faintly, in the distance, Axel could hear something akin to a roar of triumph.
He slowly turned and looked through the now-clear sky, across the barren wasteland now covered in rubble and dust, and up the crumbled mountains to their shattered peaks, still cracking under the weight of the most massive dragon Axel had ever seen.